AI War:Advanced Research Station

Vault of advanced AI technology. Capture to gain a new ship type for your team to build at space docks, as well as 500 bonus knowledge. You cannot destroy these, but if it dies sometime after you capture it, you won't lose the technology you gained from it. Can gather knowledge, but not from hostile planets.You can see which types of ship you may gain by bringing one of your own Science Labs to the planet and the ship you gain when you capture the planet will be the leftmost of the 3 ship types shown on the ARS tab on the Science Lab.If you want to pick a specific ship from the 3, use the Research Redirection Hacker before destroying the AI Command Station. After capturing the planet, each player must independently pick one of the three ships from the ARS tab. Players are not required to pick the same ship type. Players who do not pick a ship type will not receive any default unlock.Produces 6 Knowledge/second on friendly and neutral planets that are in supply.

How to use in your fleet

If you already have the leftmost ship-type of the three choices because you have hacked a Design Backup Server from an AI who has it, you will not gain one of the other available types without hacking. Unlocking the same ship-type twice is a waste and won't grant you additional ships.

As to what ship-types will be available in a game... the map-gen engine (essentially) randomly reorders the available ship-types, then assigns them sequentially to each ARS in turn. This means:

None will be the bonus ship-types you have picked at the beginning of the game,

No two ARS will share the same ship-types.

Happy choosing.

How to counter when in the AI fleet

Not applicable. The AI owns these stations until the player captures the planet, but they provide no benefit to the AI.